To start, a fresh, vibrant salad of garden picked Nasturtium leaves. Next, lightly pan-fried Kohlrabi served with a side dish of cherry tomatoes, and to top it all off, homemade persimmon cookies and jam.

The new spring menu at Chez Panisse? Actually, it's just a few of the dishes the primary students in Tara's Outdoor Education program have recently learned to prepare and share.

New this year, this wonderful program allows 2 or 3 students from each primary class to spend 15 minutes a day learning about planting, harvesting, preparing and sharing food, weather and the change of seasons. On their frequent nature walks, they learn to identify each plant, animal or fruit they see. They study what each needs to survive in their environment, and then later record this new information in their own nature journals. So far this year they've planted the orange, lemon and kumquat trees you may have noticed in the playground, as well as lettuce, chard, and Chinese radishes. While snails seem to have threatened the success of the lettuces, all other plants seem to be thriving!

But perhaps the greatest collective moment in the Outdoor Education Program this year was ‘SAVE THE EARTHWORM DAY.’ Noticing that millions of earthworms seemed to be stranded on the pavement after a particularly harsh thunderstorm (and now knowing how important and beneficial earthworms are to the garden) Blair led the crusade to rescue and return the earthworms to their home. Naturally, this involved a great deal of running, laughing and digging in the dirt - as all great things in childhood do!

Outdoor/Garden/Movement Program staff is: Katie Pearn